Teachers should be aware that “not all pornography is bad” when taking sex education classes, according to guidance made available to schools.

Pupils as young as 11 should be taught the dangers of 'sexting' Photo: PA

By Melanie Hall and Graeme Paton

10:01PM BST 25 Apr 2013

168 Comments

A publication released by a group of health and children’s charities says that teachers should bear in mind that pornography is “hugely diverse”.

Pupils as young as 11 should be taught the dangers of “sexting” and five-year-olds should know how airbrushing in the media creates unrealistic body image expectations, it says.

Older pupils aged 14 upwards should tackle “real” and “unreal” behaviour in pornography, says the guide, which directs teachers to a list of online resources they can use in lessons.

It suggests using a website called TheSite.org, an advice forum for young people, which tells teenagers that “porn can be great” and aims to tackle a series of “myths” about the subject. “Sex is great. And porn can be great. It’s the idea that porn sex is like real sex which is the problem,” says the website. “But if you can separate the fantasy from the reality you’re much more likely to enjoy both.”

The guide was published by the Sex Education Forum (SEF), a coalition of more than 90 organisations, including the NSPCC and Barnardo’s, established to campaign for better lessons in the subject.

However, critics said many parents would be “horrified” if their children were taught about pornography in school. Campaigners said it was “playing with fire” and warned that it could encourage a casual attitude towards sex.

The publication follows the Government’s announcement that it will no longer include personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE), which is commonly used to deliver sex education lessons, in the National Curriculum. Instead, schools will be left to draw up their own syllabuses.

On Thursday the SEF released the first edition of the online publication Sex Educational Supplement — The Pornography Issue, which is intended to help schools teach sex education, providing resources on how to broach the “potentially difficult and controversial subject” of pornography.

The publication includes a “wish list” compiled by teachers about what they think fellow staff should know, including that “pornography is hugely diverse — it’s not necessarily 'all bad’ ”.

However, Norman Wells, from the Family Education Trust, said that introducing pupils to pornography risked undermining children’s “natural sense of reserve”.

“The intention appears to be to steer children and young people away from a belief in moral absolutes and to encourage them to think that there are no rights and wrongs when it comes to sexual expression,” he said.

“Many parents will be horrified at the prospect of their children being taught about pornography within such a framework. To take a no-holds barred approach to sex education has the potential to break down pupils’ natural sense of reserve and to encourage casual attitudes towards sex.”

He added: “If we want children to view sexual intimacy as something valuable, special and worthy of respect, it needs to be addressed with modesty and restraint. To give lessons on pornography is to play with fire.”

The publication includes lesson ideas for each age group, with suggestions including discussing the dangers of “sexting” with pupils aged 11 to 14. It asks students to think about why young people do it, “which may include positive reasons such as 'for fun’ ”.

The publication features an interview with a state school teacher from Sheffield, who asks her 15 and 16-year-old pupils to give their views on pornography.

Boo Spurgeon, the head of personal, social, health and economic education at Forge Valley Community School, reported that her pupils said they “need the chance to consider the pros and cons, and there should be balanced teaching about it, not just negatives”.

Pupils said the subject should be mentioned in the first year of secondary school, for 11 and 12-year-olds, because “that is the average age that pornography gets viewed”. Students also noted that “you can learn some helpful positions from some films”, but added: “It isn’t a model of good sex, but sometimes people do it because they enjoy it.”

The Department for Education has outlined a system in which schools would be given the task of drawing up their own PSHE curriculum.

Chris McGovern, a former headmaster and chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said lessons on pornography should only be carried out with parental consent. “This material may be widely available but some responsible parents will be very careful to make sure their children can’t access it and they would be horrified to think they are being exposed to it at school,” he said.

Lucy Emmerson, coordinator of the Sex Education Forum, said: “Teachers have told us they are nervous about mentioning pornography, yet given the ease with which children are able to access explicit sexual content on the internet, it is vital that teachers can respond to this reality appropriately.”

At a concert at the National Portrait Gallery, yes! the NPG! I saw a concert, that was performed in front of families with children. One song called 'Street boy' described 'I felt the throbbing from behind' . This is what we have sunk to as a Nation, promoting child homosexual prostitution! We have had AIDs and HIV, should we not take notice of these terrible events and get morality back into our lives?

If you have no concept of morality, ie: if being non-judgemental, and refusing to “stigmatise” any sexual behaviour on the grounds that it's all down to personal choice, even at times regardless of the age of the participants; if you are devious enough and you also have an interest in doing so, you can always cobble together an argument in favour of anything, even encouraging children to regard some pornography as valid, or no doubt the fashionable buzz word would be “empowering”.

This week I listened to a piece on BBC 4's Today programme about a debate that was to be held on the benefits of pornography. I can't remember the name of the woman who was supporting the argument but, bless her, Germaine Greer was opposing the motion.

The arguments put forward by the proposer appeared to be two-fold. As people had different libidos wasn't it good that those with higher sex drives (mainly men) could get their rocks of by using pornography rather than “worrying” their less libidinous partners or eying up the woman nextdoor? I'm certain these partners, rather than claiming headaches, would have been far happier, for their husbands to lock themselves in the loo with a copy of “Big and Bouncy”, “Bestiality Weekly” or “Kiddie Porn Pics.” And I'm sure they would have respected their husbands so much more for doing so. After all nowadays that's the most important ingredient in marriage isn't it – allowing your partner to pursue and enjoy their sex drive? Forget all this stuff about commitment and caring, that's just soooo un-modern!

Her second argument was based on body image. As pornography catered for all physical tastes, grossly over or underweight, amputees, dwarves, those who are physically disabled, deformed or mentally impaired, it enabled such people to feel good about their deformities or abnormalities. She omitted to mention that as with all such pornography the images were not designed to arouse the subjects of the sex acts being performed but the physically normal, if not mentally so, wierdos who enjoyed viewing them. At that point I switched the radio off but you get the idea about being able to make an argument in favour of anything if you try hard enough.

So we have on the one hand a movement in favour of pornography which is felt to be worthy not only of debate but to be given air-time on the BBC, the country's monopoly, publicly funded, public service national broadcaster, and on the other we have the following, publicly expressed attitude towards sex with children from a leading gay rights campaigner that has been printed in a national newspaper (need you ask its name, it is of course, The Guardian).

In a letter to that title in 1997 Peter Tatchell wrote: “Several of my friends - gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their concious choice and gave them great joy.”

Let's make no mistake according to him children aged as young as nine said it was their conscious choice to have sex with adults and it gave them great joy. He has also gone on record as supporting a reduction in the age of consent to 14 “in the interests of children's sexual rights and welfare.” Children's sexual rights!!! - that just about sums it up, and God, alone knows where the children's “welfare” comes in?

And this is the non-judgemental world in which we now live where “stigmatisation” and any idea of shame (unless you're a banker) are unacceptable as descriptions of any sort of sexual behaviour. The fact that organisations like the NSPCC and Barnardos have signed up to a policy that would in anyway support the view that school-children should be encouraged to believe that pornography of any kind “is not all bad” - ie:some of it must be “good” so go out and try it kids – is glaring evidence, if any more is needed, of what a truly sick society we have become.